An Interview with Ryan Gattis, author of “All Involved”

An Interview with Ryan Gattis, author of “All Involved”
Today marks the 24th anniversary of the Rodney King riots, a wound still healing in the collective psyche of Los Angeles residents. When author Ryan Gattis first started his latest novel, All Involved, he didn't think the riots would be his backdrop, but over the course of his research he felt increasingly drawn to the painful event as both a compelling story and also as a kind of ever-present ghost that no Angeleno, especially those living in or near South L.A., can every truly get rid of. In this interview, Gattis talks about how he approached Los Angeles as an outsider and how his research subjects gave his fiction a sense of urgency and empathy that he didn't expect when he first set out to write an L.A. novel.

¤

LARB Contributors

Ryan Gattis is the author of the novels All Involved (2015), Safe (2017), and The System (forthcoming: July 2020). He is a member of L.A. art collective UGLARworks, and a mentor in PEN America’s Prison Writing Program. He lives in Los Angeles.

Tom Lutz is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest book is Born Slippy: A Novel.

For more, go to tomlutzwriter.com  
Laurie Winer is a Los Angeles Review of Books founding editor.
Seth Greenland’s first memoir, A Kingdom of Tender Colors, will be published in 2020 by Europa Editions. He is the author of five novels. His 1997 play Jungle Rot won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund for New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award. He was a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love.

Share

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?


LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!